Knowing .NET

An article in the February 2004 Communications of the ACM by Yossi Lichtenstein says, in the hedged terms of a small sample size and an academic paper: "current outsourcing practices [contracting, not technical] may fall short of the sophistication prescribed by theories." In other words, outsourcing is being seized on as a golden bullet, while a more sophisticated analysis of costs and benefits would at least alter the terms of outsourcing if not take it off the table.

Not that this bodes well for programmers competing with cheap offshore labor, as it implies that the managers embracing the practice are those who don't stay abreast of magazines like CACM.

12:06:15 PM    comment []   trackback []

Recently Wacom released an updated version of their graphics driver for penabled Tablet PCs. This release apparently solves the problem of ink lines being jagged, which was caused by the previous version. via [Tabula PC]

Holy palsy, Batman! I thought my digitizer was going!

Update: For my Motion Computing M1200, the update works great. It's a little disconcerting -- the first time you run it, it uninstalls your pen driver with no acknowledgement that this is a temporary step. You reboot, run it again, and it installs the new driver. Reboot again, and the tremors are gone!

9:03:33 AM    comment []   trackback []

Well, that's what the Cross site now says anyway. via [Tabula PC]

The greatest saga in the history of the Tablet PC has been the wait for a well-designed digitizing pen. Why Cross has had such a hard time (more than a year delay) wrapping a decent barrel around the not-a-lot-o'-stuff required is baffling. I just wish it wasn't Cross, whose aesthetics are kind of ho-hum. I want a Waterman Expert digitizer or an Eberhard Faber American #2 . Sniping aside, I'll be ordering mine the day they become available.

9:01:40 AM    comment []   trackback []